I'd like to host a dedicated server and play survival on it, but pressing the ~ button and typing c_sethealth(1) in emergencies is a thing I can not resist doing because of how easy it is. I know there are probably mods that can disable console, but before I have to resort to that, I'd like to know if there's a way I could host a server without being admin in it (server seems to make me admin from the cluster key).

The lureplant has smoldering priority. It will catch wildfire before other things do.
To explain it a bit more, smoldering happens only to things around you by a certain radius (6 tiles I believe). If a lureplant happens to be in that circle when the game tries to make something smolder, the lureplant will smolder instead. This means that while lureplants can define a "wildfire-free standing zone", it will not guarantee your base will not catch fire out of summer heat. If the game makes a fire happen while the lureplant isn't in the radius, it might make something else catch fire, possibly a part of your base if you happen to be leaving it while a fire is about to happen.

Actually, it doesn't work that way. Treeguards have a chance of spawning from a tree after hitting a nearby one (or the tree itself) with an axe. The game tries to spawn a Treeguard after every axe swing. The chances get higher the older the world is, as HamBatter said.
Also, living / calm Treeguards will attack you if you start chopping a tree near them. They don't care about whether you haven't chopped a tree all year. One axe swing near them and they'll go after you.

I must add:
You can check for the banned person's name or KU ID by typing
print(list1[NumberOfBannedPersonOnTheList].netprofilename)
or
print(list1[NumberOfBannedPersonOnTheList].userid)
The first one will print the banned person's name into console, and the second one will print the banned person's KU ID.
These will only work after executing ThemInspector's first command.
So if you want to check banned player number 3's name (from the list ThemInspector's command makes), you'll type
print(list1[3].netprofilename)
This should be helpful along with ThemInspector's instructions (which I was going to post here...).
EDIT:
list1 = TheNet:GetBlacklist
for k,v in pairs(list1) do print(k,v, v.netprofilename) end
Use this command to list the banned players WITH the name as part of the list.

1. Willow makes new players fear sanity. You should just kill the shadow creatures when you go insane. Newbies playing Willow usually learn that insanity = death
2. Players should NOT get used to playing Wigfrid. As a Wigfrid main I can say that I rely too much on my battle helm and battle spear, which are things only available to servers with Wigfrid on them. I can still play as non-Wigfrid characters if I have to, but new players should absolutely NOT get used to playing Wigfrid.
If anything, they should either play Wilson or Wes. If they play Wilson, they'll get a good grasp on the game's mechanics without getting used to any special mechanics (such as specific character perks). If they play Wes, then they'll get better at the game faster (even if they keep dying) by getting used to the game as being more difficult then it actually is.
I think what JellyUltra was saying is that new players should also know the "pro strategies", which would help them get better at the game faster (instead of raising them to rely on rabbit traps for spider hunting and using farms as a main food source).

Giants aren't much of a problem. All you have to do is run away as far away from the base as you can when they spawn (or when antlion starts making warnings), then either fight or make them do chores for you (the Bearger is pretty good at chopping trees). Sometimes you can let Deerclops clear out spider dens for you, or make bearger clear out a forest and spawn Treeguards.

Well, hounds seem to be very random in their behavior, randomly deciding to bark a random number of times after an attack, which gets them easily desynced. They're also much faster than the player and have a pretty long attack range, which makes extremely difficult to successfully kite in groups of over 4. Lets not forget that they also come from different directions.
I wouldn't be too worried about a day 56 hound attack, though. Most hound attacks on days under 100 spawn hounds slowly enough for you to kill 1 by 1, as long as you kill them as soon as you can.
If they start coming too fast for me to kill, I use my base's location to my advantage:
- Pigs in a pig village can distract some hounds while I kill some
- Beefalo will completely destroy hound attacks if you live near them
- In the caves, you get worm attacks instead of hound attacks which are much easier to deal with since Depth Worms are slower than the player and very predictable.
- Tallbirds can also take out a number of hounds, but you need to be careful not to get them mad at you instead of the hounds and in summer and autumn fire hounds could burn their nests.
- Dragonfly's arena with 6 magma pools, 5 of which are on the borders of it and can be safely ran around without getting Dragonfly's attention. These pools also cause anything that touches them to light up on fire, so you can use that to separate (or even kill) normal hounds from fire hounds.
There are probably more base location perks related to hound attacks, but these are the ones I can bring up off the top of my head.
If you don't want to use these, you can set up your own defenses:
- Tooth traps, as mentioned above, are the most used method of hound attack protection (personally I don't like using them for some reason)
- A Meat Bulb can be set up in way which will make it only spawn the eyeplants it would in the borders of it's reach. This can be used to, again, distract some hounds while you kill off others.
- You could build your own "pig village" (a Bunnyman village could work better, but you need to make sure you aren't holding any meat) and keep them out of their houses at night by baiting them with a walled up food item.
- You could drop a load of flammables around an Ice Flingomatic (I use mini signs, which come at the price of 1 per log (1 board makes 4 of them)) and light them up on fire when a hound attack is coming. Hounds will freeze after being hit with 1 snowball. Ice hounds cannot be frozen, which may cause this strategy to be ineffective in cases where more ice hounds come than normal ones in winter or spring.
- Webber can walk around webbed turf without making spiders come after him or being slowed down, which you can use to your advantage by planting a bunch of them (preferably protected by an Ice Flingomatic) and running to them when a hound attack approaches.